SWTOR Massively Multi-SI's
by N7Knight
Summary: Eight kids volunteer to beta-test a prototype matrix-like gaming system and are thrown into SWTOR, but everything isn't fun and games as they thought it would be. Will they band together or choose sides in a war that is suddenly theirs? Can they ever return to reality, and is reality truly what they think it is?
1. Cassadee and Phalen

(Shump!) And just like that I'm plugged into the Matrix. It feels so real: the breaths I take, touch, sight it's like I never left my body instead I was suddenly transported and my body is left trying to adjust to the sudden change of altitude. I would even insist it was real if, I wasn't riding in a shuttle descending over a lush un-earth-like planet and my body wasn't suddenly green.

"Isn't this surreal Phalen!" I shout out gleefully to the only other person seated in the shuttle my best friend and neighbor Phalen Flemming who I dragged into this experiment with me. When I finally pry my eyes from the amazing view outside my porthole to look at him my breath hitches in my throat. "What happened to your eyes!?"

"I, the Programmers claimed that we would see things from the eyes of the characters so I wanted to know how that would work for a character with no eyes..." He answers absently while fingering the patches of alien tech where his brown eyes used to be, obviously as stunned as I am if not more, to discover his eyeballs are gone. No wonder he wasn't reacting to the view outside.

"Geez, so you chose your species to be Miraluka!" He's gutsier than I am, I chose Mirailan because it's the closest thing to Human without actually being Human, that and the tattoos are cool. "Does it hurt, can you see?"

"No, but I can see, just not in a way I, I can describe. I can see you but only as multi-colored lights in your silhouette and the definitions on your face, it sparks and fluctuates like it's energy... Where are we?" He asks nervously gripping his seat tightly when shuttle buckles from turbulence.

"Um, a Republic shuttle entering a planets atmosphere, Tython I think since we both chose jedi classes. So you can't see the ship's hull or the planet outside the window?" This is going a bit far for a "new gaming experience" to cause a kid to be virtually blind.

Phalen doesn't respond at first as he tries to take in the interior of the ship somehow finding his porthole to the view outside. "Holy... This is incredible Cass! It's like I'm looking at satellite pictures of the planets radiation or something." He exclaims twisting in his harness to press his face into the glass "Everything is like looking at a running Matrix code cept in an unlimited color spectrum!"Leave it to Phalen to think that's cool and not off putting. It takes a couple of tries to get his attention again since he's transfixed with another version of the world outside I can't imagine.

"Phalen! This might be the last time we get to talk before were swept off for our class missions planet side. What's your approach going to be for the Consular and where should we meet up when we can?" Despite playing swtor more times then I care to admit I still can't help feeling anxiously excited about living it, and I know the only thing to settle my nerves right now is to have a plan.

"Right sorry, uh like how I played it originally I guess?" He scratches his close cut curly black hair, it's a little unnerving to see nothing but two eye patches looking back at me. "Honestly whatever makes sense to the situation Cass... Do we have any bags or pockets that might contain a holo-communicator?" Hey yeah, why didn't I think of that? The characters are always pulling those out of nowhere. It would help a lot to be able to keep in touch that way.

My padawan standard uniform has no pockets to speak of but as I look around I spot two packs in the overhead compartment above Phalen's head, huh I could have swore that wasn't there before. Finding the release on my harness I stand up unsteadily in the moving vehicle.

Grabbing both I plop back into my seat and toss one across to him. "Check it out."

But instead of catching the lightly tossed sack Phalen makes no reaction until it smacks him in the face, "Ugh, what the heck was that!?" He coughs as it rolls off his face and plops in his lap.

"Sorry. I tossed you one of the packs I found in the compartment above you, you can't see it can you?"

"I could see the air in front of me parting for a teardrop shape of dark space but other than noticing it was coming fast at me..." He answers irritably before turning thoughtful. "I, I think objects with no energy or power source, I can only see as empty spaces in the matrix..."

"Is this too weird for you? We can abort the program if it is." Which is honestly the last thing I want to do for this once in a lifetime opportunity but I will if he's experiencing side-effects. This is the first time anything like this has ever been done who knows if it will have real life consequences, like what if his brain hooked up to the simulator in reality can't process the world like that.

"No way! It's weird, but I'll get used to it." He's as, as trilled by this prototype testing as I am and probably wouldn't abort early even if he had to. Well that's why we have a bunch of guys in lab coats monitoring everything while we're hooked up to this thing, if there's actually a problem they'll pull him. And me too, I don't want to do this alone while he's forced to watch from an average monitor.

"But um Cass, I can't tell what's in this thing from touch..." He says sheepishly as I quickly pop to my feet and stand over him to look over the bag and not drag out his embarrassment.

It's odd that a society so advanced as the Republic would have a simple draw-string canvas pack, probably Jedi issue, trying to go for simplicity of their robes maybe. "Just clothes mostly: simple tunics, pants and a Jedi cloak cool. Oh and there's the communicator! Though I think this bag is meant for me and the one I have is meant for you."

"Why do you say that?" He asks curiously reaching in to finger the contents within trying to picture them.

"Well for one, that one has a bra in it." I smirk as he jerks his hand back out looking like he's been caught rooting around in my underwear drawer. I try to hold back a laugh as I open the one in my hands for a brief inspection. "Yep this ones the same as mine but meant for a dude your size, here." I switch the one in his lap before reaching in and placing his communicator in his hand returning to my seat to closer inspect the contents of mine.

"How do we call each other?" He asks while fingering the clothes within rooting around for anything that isn't fabric. That clould be a potential cool toy.

"Well, remember in game they would refer to holo-frequencies like a phone number, we just need to figure out each others frequency..." I tell him what he probably already guessed, just filling the empty space with words, pretending that I know what I'm talking about as I inspect the object like a monkey given a cell phone.

"Beep-beep-beep." Phalen's communicator lights up after I press the first of eight buttons stacked in two rows of four on my communicator. Causing the image of me sitting cross legged with my hand outstretched popping out of his palm. "Okay... I think I have you on speed dial, on the first button top row." My image echoes before it blinks out when I thumb the biggest button ending the call, "I wonder want the second speed-dial button is for?"

"Hel-hello? Who's this, is this thing on?" Says the very distorted and upside down image of a dark blue Twi'lek as she awkwardly fiddles with the communicator in her hands causing it to project an unfinished image of her until she finally lays it flat in her palm.

"Wow, Cassadee is that you? Sweet facial tats!" The Twi'lek with a face like my cousin Min's, exclaims as she finally takes in my holo-projection. "I'm so glad I let you talk me into doing this everything is so awesome here!"

"Min, I'm so glad you decided to go through with. Where are you? What class did you choose?" And it did take some convincing she was terrified that an electric short from the Prototype would render her brain dead or something... Which would almost never happen... I think.

"I'm in my ship that just landed on a planet this guy Skavak calls Ord Mantel. You would not believe the intense landing I just had!" When we started this we all thought having some of us eight testers having no experience with the game made a good control group, but now, the thought of having my spontaneous cousin role playing as a smuggler in a war zone with no clue what's going to happen...

"...and then this way cute boy comes running in saying it's not safe to take off until some turret thingys are taken out of commission. Somehow I got volunteered to run towards the fighting and take care of it all by myself. So I said I needed to get my gear and now..."

"Min! Take a breath. You can't continue on in the game unless you shut down those turrets so your going to have to improvise. Avoid the fighting as much as you can, make sure you always have a blaster with you... and don't trust Skavak, but the dude with dreads, Corso Riggs you can trust, he's gonna be your first NPC."

"Oh... my NP-what?" Seriously? I made sure to go through SWTOR 101 with her before we plugged in, I even turned on my PC and showed her the mechanics of the game.

"It means Non Player Companion he'll join your crew soon enough, Min." Phalen answers helpfully for me as I plop my forehead into my free palm with a frustrated sigh. "Find my brother Skylar, he said he'd be trooper class and Ord Mantel is the troopers starting planet also. He knows the game and can help you."

"Is that Phalen, he's with you?" She asks coyly and I have to resist the urge to hang up on her, every opportunity she gets Min annoyingly likes to insinuate that Phalen and I have something going on beyond being friends. "Anyway thanks I knew he would be a trooper but I had no idea to look for him here."

I'm about to warn her about Syreena when the shuttle rocks and settles to a stand still. "We've landed on Tython Min, we've got to go now, we'll call you back when we can." Phalen tells her before hanging up for me just as the back end of the shuttle opens and lowers a ramp for us. This is it, let's hope I don't get killed on the first mission. I'm still not clear how respawn will work...

Author's Note: Hey thanks for reading this all the way through! This is my first Fanfic entry so if you like it so far, please bear with me as I try to get this together, it'll get better. Oh and any helpful tips or advice you'd like to share I'd appreciate it. Next I hope to upload Alex's chapter he'll be the bounty hunter SI.


	2. Alex and Coby

**First off I'm sorry for the long wait, I have a lot of excuses some of them valid others due to my procrastinating nature. And I really want to apologize to those who favorited and followed this story after only the first chapter! I honestly wasn't expecting anyone to take that kind of interest in my work so soon. So from now on I'll try my best to update as regularly as I can, to make it up to you guys. **

"Geez, this place stinks!"

"So you've said, four times already," Coby answers irritably as he slogs through the smog of Hutta alongside me. "Alex give it a rest! I have a nose too you know."

"Really, I actually didn't notice till now, what with those freaky red soulless eyes you have now." I bite back sarcastically, admittedly not my best come back. Dare you to try better though when your dropped on a planet that over zealous programmers made to smell like rotting fish, eggs and carcass all rolled into one and shoved up your nose. While dressed in this ridicules and sweltering jumpsuit that looks like it was made from comforters.

"You should talk," The kid snorts and before I can stop myself I self consciously rub the three little horns sticking out of my forehead, damn. I chose Zabrak cause they looked bad ass and I'm not gonna let some smart-mouthed brat make me self conscious about it, like some chick constantly checking her make-up.

"Do you even know where we're going?" I grumble wishing I had paid more attention when that Tech was giving me a summary of the beginning of this game. Still think it's pretty defunct that they chose to test this first on a game like this, instead of Halo.

"The Cantina ahead called the Poison Pit or something, I'm going to make contact with Keeper and your going to meet your team."

"Right my team." I get a team already, sweet. "Well let's hurry up and get inside, it's got to smell better inside right?" Wrong; well at least it's cooler inside, which almost makes up for the sweaty, dirty laundry and slightly less rotten egg smell within the crowded bar.

"I've got to find a private room to make contact with Keeper." Coby yells to me over the din of laughter, loud mouth drunks and the egg-head creatures playing the typical music. "You'll meet an old man named Braden down that hallway, he's the one that recruited you for the great hunt. Good luck!"

While short and skinny Coby slips through the crowd and soon disappears unnoticed by the bar patrons I manage to grab the glaring attention of everyone I have to squeeze pass in the crowded bar, making me on edge. What, they got something against Zabraks?

"Hey now..." A pretty girl with tech curving her left brow and temple announces as I enter the second room I attempted to find "Braden" in. Bringing the attention of the horned guy cleaning weapons at the table and an old guy maybe Braden, all on me. Hopefully otherwise this is going to be just as awkward as the stink-eye I got from multiple card players in the first room, when I interrupted their game to ask for some guy who wasn't present. Should have guessed the room I wanted was the glowing green one; just figured it was a force field or something.

"Hey now indeed," The old man affirmed planting his hands on his hips as he looked at me. Puncturing what little bubble of hope I had that the girl's comment had been a come on. "Team this is the guy we're pinning all our hopes on. Deadly accurate and with nerves of steel. He's Great Hunt material all right." Cool I already have a bad ass reputation, I can work with that. "What do you say Hunter ready to meet your team?"

About to open my mouth to answer when a weird pin wheel of sorts pops up at the bottom of my vision where ever I look; oh I get a HUD with prompts when interacting with people. Well let's see... Why the hell do they make the letters so small? 'They're all there is?', 'Absolutely.' and 'When do I get paid?' Huh I guess I'm not one for words... All right let's go with the middle one. Now how do I... "My team, I like the sound of that." My mouth moves of it's own accord, freaking me out at first. Okay all I have to do is think it, I guess.

"Get used to the idea. To win the Great Hunt, you'll need support, structure and intel. Let's do things official like. This is Mako, a little genius I picked up years back on Nar Shaddaa. She provides intel and tech."

She nods to be proudly before remarking, "Hope your as good as the old man says." Couldn't I say the same about you? I'm tempted to respond but Braden continues on with his introduction. "And the big bruiser is Jory. He's handles the heavy lifting and provides security to our base of operations."

The horned alien says something that to me sounds like complete gibberish but the helpful, the same time disconcerting subtitles at the bottom of my vision translates. Wealthy and famous huh? I knew picking a bad-ass bounty hunter would pay off! Then the wheel shows up again, 'You two make a cute couple.' what the what, why would I ask that? Are they? "Nice to meet you both let's get to work."

"All right, enough introductions. Down to business." Isn't that what I just said? "We're here because the Great Hunt has been called. Little Mako here is the most rabid fan of Hunter history this side of Geonosis," I know this is gonna sound hypocritical coming from me but isn't that a little disturbing, considering what we do? Heh, don't judge a book by it's cover anyway she doesn't look the type to enjoy gore and killings. "And even she doesn't know exactly what the Great Hunt entails."

"I do know the names of every Hunt winner though: Bloodworthy, The Defenestrator, Jewl the Night Bringer..." I'm not going to get a title am I, it honestly sounds kinda lame.

"Every hunter that wins the Great Hunt, went on to massive glory and riches - that's why we're here." And everything hangs on me, that's what he's getting at isn't it? No pressure. Picking 'Can I shoot things, already?' I can't help an evil smirk.

**Coby **

"Hey, what you up to Coby?" Alex calls out to me coming around the corner his chest puffed up as he literally swaggers up to me, the bounty hunter persona already getting to his head I see.

"Hey, I'm undercover! You got to refer to be as the Red Blade from now." I correct him keeping my voice low.

"Yeah, that's not going to happen." He snorts. "So what's your hush-hush mission here?"

"I'm serious, I'm suppose to pose as the Red Blade for Nem'ro. Don't you remember the Technicians warning us of attempting to deviate from the storyline."

"Okay, okay." He concedes, "Look I got a mission to raid this safe house of some guy called Veks. Since your here - wanna tag along?"

"I am heading out to meet with Jheeg, so yeah, it wouldn't hurt to travel together until we figure out how combat handles with this system. We're bound to get jumped out there. Don't want you to get lost out there after all."

"Shut up, and follow me." He rolls his eyes knocking my shoulder. Before we exit onto the streets, I direct Alex to talk to the the guy sitting at one of the tables that will direct him to his partner to teach him things to impress Braden or something, I don't really remember the quest to well. As he talks with him I approach the large man on the couch who'll want me to free his kid brother. Once that's done it doesn't take long for us to encounter our first fight.

"So you have to go in there to complete the task that guy in the cantina gave you?" Alex asks skeptically as we stare across the dusty street at the place with roughly half a dozen armed gangsters already to charge the entrance of the place.

"Yup." Well I guess it's the only way to progress in the game, "If things go bad we'll just respawn." I offer with a shrug, concealing my nerves. Just cause it looks real doesn't mean it is, so relax.

"Sure..." Alex answers hesitantly apparently as worried about how that untested detail will work out, as much as I am. "One way to find out." He announces before rolling his shoulders back and crossing the street. They start shooting before we even reach the other end of the street. Crap! We didn't think this through, we have no cover as the blaster bolts ping in the ground at our feet, I can feel the heat from the ones aimed higher, that just barely miss us. "Get behind something!" I shout to Alex my damn voice breaking as I scramble for the ditch along the road behind us. Diving in, I fumble for my holstered blaster. Once my shaking hands finally have it out I rest my elbows on the rise of the ditch laying on my chest.

It's then that I realize Alex is still standing there in the middle of the street! His blaster out and firing, not sure if he's actually hitting anything. But everything else becomes just background noise to me when I witness a blaster bolt hit his gut, knocking him flat on his back with a wheezed groan. That doesn't happen after the first hit in the game! "Alex you okay?" Stupidly I rise to my knees to get a higher angle to survey the severity of the wound. But the volley of shots aimed at my head quickly force me to rethink that. I gotta cover us or we're both screwed. "Alex!"

"Keep shooting." He groans recovering his breath after a tick, rolling towards the ditch as I keep up my spray of suppressive fire in the bad guys general direction. "How bad is it?" I shout over my shoulder as he lands beside me kicking up dust.

"No holes..." He calls clearly relieved as he pats his stomach. "I think whatever armor or shielding points I have, absorbed the damage just not the... argh, the punch." His expression tight with pain Alex rolls to his chest returning fire again. Glad he was the one to find out the hard way whether or not the 'Virtual Reality' system could simulate pain and not me. Beta note for programmers: dial down combat intensity and no pain receptors would be great.

I don't know if we have a auto-lock perk or something but as soon as Alex and I buckled down and focused on actually hitting our targets. It was almost unreal how accurate we were and how quick they went down after that. Before I knew it everything around us dropped in volume becoming still. Guess our shoot out cleared the nearby streets.

"I think we're clear." Alex informs me after a moment. Before I cautiously rise out of the ditch after him. "That was - intense." He comments lamely his attention drawn to the bodies already starting to fade away, probably respawning to take another shot at us later.

"Yeah, and to think those are the easy newbie enemies." We better level up soon or at least readjust our way of handling combat. "Are you all right?" Noticing he's still hunched over rubbing the area just below his ribs.

"Yeah just bruised from the programs sucker punch. Who the hell thought it was a good idea to have real pain in this game?"

"That actually wasn't suppose to happen." I scratch my head recalling what I learned soon after signing up for the program. "The system shouldn't be able to transmit pain signals to our neural receptors... Maybe since your head believed you got shot it created the pain on it's own? Like when you instinctually jerk back your hand from a hot pan as if you got burned even though it turns out not to be that hot."

"There's a big difference between that and this Coby." He dead pans after a pause of trying to process my winded example.

"Yeah, well then you can ask one of the Tech's why they think it happened once they pull us." Man, this was short lived. I better be part of the second Beta.

"You really think they're going to pull us?" Alex straightens the look on his face mirroring my own, bet he can just picture their argument: 'Unintended side effect could result in injury or death in extreme circumstances. We'll have to scrap the project from the top, down.' And us arguing that there's no reason to assume that being able to feel unreal pain will be harmful. As much as I hate to admit it they're the winners of that debate.

"I'm surprised they haven't unplugged us already, honestly." For some odd ball reason we both unintentionally look up at the sky like we'll be able to see the programmers reaching down to pluck us out or give us some kind of explanation why things are still active. "We better check our mailboxes for one of their messages as soon as we can." I add suddenly getting an uneasy feeling that the guys on the other end are having technical difficulties.

"Let's finish up here first. Might as well enjoy this while we can." Alex shrugs after a tick of thinking it over, I couldn't have put it better myself. It's not as if me knowing about any difficulties they may or may not be experiencing will change anything. As much as I don't like it, I have to trust them to do their jobs.

"Okay you head in first, I'll cover you." He encourages pushing me in front of him.

"Wait why do I have to be the first in the door?!"

"Cause I've already been shot." He answers simply as if it's only fair.

"You've got some serious skill breaking through Fa'athra's line and some nerve coming in here. Do I know you?" The guy called Rex I think, asks as we approach, Alex and I look at each other as he circles around to stand behind Rex, oh yeah we're bad-asses.

"We don't have time for this. We're here for the Brell kid." I choose, but once my mouths stops moving on it's own an idea comes to me. "I'm the Red Blade." What, it's not like I'm changing the storyline, it can't hurt to use the reputation I currently have right? Like I hoped, that got a reaction, his eyes going wide as he takes a step back only to back into the menacing Zabrak behind him.

"What do you want with him? I think I would have heard if The Red Blade was working for Fa'athra." He tries to recover like it didn't mean anything when he heard my alias.

"Look, I don't care one bit about Nem'ro or Fa'athra. I work for myself, and you're going to give me the Brell kid."

"Sorry buddy I can't do that." Oh well, I thought the Red Blade bit would convince easier. "The Brell kid's a traitor. The first time Fa'athra's thugs start shooting at us, he turns coward and tries to join their side. Nem'ro's got alot of questions for him and I can't let him go."

"I think we can work out a deal." Alex suddenly says.

"You're right we're civilized people, aren't we? Look I don't wanna make any trouble. So how about I pay you some credits and you two go on your way. Tell Brell's big brother you got here too late or something, you'll be richer and the weasel will get what he has coming." I exchange a look with Alex, I don't think he wants to take the bribe either, but what clenches it for me - is the desperate pleading look from the kid in the pen. I know it's just a game but I wouldn't wish whatever Nem'ro has planned for him on anyone. So after telling him no deal and making it clear it was in his best interests to free Brell. We clear out after the freed kid runs for his life back to his big brother.

I don't think I've ever successfully intimidated someone into doing something I wanted, ever in my life. It was actually... pretty cool! I know it's just a game and it was only due to me being a Chiss with the Red Blade's reputation, but still. "Okay, it'll be a fight raiding Vex's safe house so let's do that first before I talk to Jheeg."

"Whatever you say - Blade." Alex jokes throwing a smart-ass salute at me. Yeah, maybe he isn't the only one letting our pretend personas get to his head.

"I wouldn't be laughing if I were you, guess who's turn it is to lead the charge?"

"Oh come on, there wasn't even anyone shooting at us last time!"

**A/N: Don't worry once I finish introducing all the SI's and the many different things they encounter being hooked up to a self evolving computer program. I'll get to the good bits, like having deeper interactions with our favorite NPC's :) Let me know who you want to read about first: SI Ashlyn, SW Mario, smuggler Min, or Trooper Logan?**


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